An interest in nature, we are told, is precisely what is novel about political ecology. In this view, political ecology extends the narrow field of the classic preoccupations of politics to new beings that have previously found themselves under represented or badly represented. I want to challenge the solidity of the link between political ecology and nature. Despite what it often asserts, I am going to show that political ecology theories, has to let go of nature. Indeed, nature is the chief obstacle that has always hampered the development of public discourse. This argument which is only paradoxical in appearance, as we shall see requires us to bring together three distinct findings, one from the sociology of the sciences, another from the practice of the ecology movements, and the third from anthropology. But this necessity is what makes our present task so difficult in order to approach the true subject of our work, we need to take for granted demonstrations that would call for several volumes each. I can either waste precious time convincing my readers of this, or else I can move ahead as quickly as possible, while asking readers to judge the tree only by its fruits that is, to wait until the following chapters to see how the postulates presented here make it possible to renew the exercise of public life. Let me begin with one small contribution of science studies, without which it would be impossible to cover the necessary ground. In all that follows, I shall ask my readers to agree to dissociate the sciences in the plural and in small letters from Science in the singular and capitalized. I ask readers to acknowledge that discourse on Science has no direct relation to the life of the sciences. The study of physics is generally recognized to be quite old but there are differences of opinion as to how old. Political ecology emerged in the 1980s as an inter disciplinary field that analyzed environmental problems using the concepts and methods of political economy. A central premise of the field is that ecological change cannot be understood without consideration of the political and economic structures and institutions within which it is embedded. The nature-society dialectic is the fundamental focus of analysis. Marxian political economy provided the initial primary theoretical influence, while the development of post-structural social theory and non equilibrium ecology infused new ideas and concepts in subsequent years.